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That may well account for Saddam's history of disastrous miscalculations, especially in war. In 1980 he saw the revolutionary confusion inside Iran as a golden opportunity. No military expert, yet commander in chief, he thought a quick strike by his superior forces could snatch back some disputed territory from Iran and earn gratitude from Arab regimes for slaying the Persian fundamentalist Shi'ite threat. But his army failed to break Ayatullah Khomeini's revolutionary forces for eight years. Whenever they threatened to conquer pieces of his territory, he shelled them with lethal chemicals, setting a pattern of resorting to extreme measures anytime his survival seemed imperiled. When Khomeini's death finally let Saddam have a cease-fire in 1988, he declared it a great victory.
A mere two years later, Saddam invaded oil-rich Kuwait as a quick way to finance the rebuilding of his war-shattered country. He subsequently misread almost every move the U.S. made in response, starting with his calculation that the first President Bush was not serious about kicking him out of Kuwait. Edhem Pasic, a Bosnian ambassador who befriended Saddam in 1979, went to Baghdad after the July 1990 invasion to persuade Saddam to withdraw. "I told him, 'Of all the reasons to leave Kuwait, maybe the most important reason for you is that the Western countries will destroy you,'" Pasic says. "He answered, 'You do not know what I know,'" preferring to believe his own misguided assessment. When, as the Allies ripped through Iraq, a general finally told Saddam that his army was being destroyed, he replied coldly, "That is your opinion." But he proved right in one crucial calculation: if he could ride out the storm, he could rebound.
This time around, there has been far less scope for miscalculation. The younger Bush has been nothing if not clear about his intention to get rid of Saddam. The dream in Washington was that once Iraq's leader was convinced of certain defeat, he would depart to stay alive. But among those who knew him, exile did not seem an option. Saddam's Arab honor would not permit him to flee. "He follows the code of the old-time Arab knights," says Toujan Faisal, a former Jordanian member of parliament. There are less romantic explanations as well. As head of a regime of cutthroats, Saddam could not afford to show signs of weakness; the minute he started to negotiate flight, he would open himself to a coup. Still, some experts suggest that Saddam might have entertained the option of going underground like Osama bin Laden so that his shadow would continue to make Iraq quake.
But the experts generally believe that for Saddam, power is everything and death is a better alternative than losing it. Any other outcome, says Phebe Marr, a former Pentagon consultant and author of a book on Iraq, would destroy the monumental myth Saddam has spent his life creating. "His legacy would disappear."